“I admit I felt like it. And yet I couldn’t help pitying her. However, such utter self-concentration as hers saves one a lot of mental anguish. She seems to regard this whole damnable business as a plot to upset her.”
Sproot appeared obsequiously at the door.
“May I bring you gentlemen some coffee?” No emotion of any kind showed on his graven wrinkled face. The events of the past few days seemed not to have affected him in any degree.
“No, we don’t want coffee, Sproot,” Markham told him brusquely. “But please be good enough to ask Miss Sibella if she will come here.”
“Very good, sir.”
The old man shuffled away, and a few minutes later Sibella strolled in, smoking a cigarette, one hand in the pocket of her vivid-green sweater-jacket. Despite her air of nonchalance her face was pale, its whiteness contrasting strongly with the deep crimson rouge on her lips. Her eyes, too, were slightly haggard; and when she spoke her voice sounded forced, as if she were playing a role against which her spirit was at odds. She greeted us blithely enough, however.
“Good morning, one and all. Beastly auspices for a social call.” She sat down on the arm of a chair and swung one leg restlessly. “Someone certainly has a grudge against us Greenes. Poor old Chet! He didn’t even die with his boots on. Felt bedroom slippers! What an end for an outdoor enthusiast!—Well, I suppose I’m invited here to tell my story. Where do I begin?” She rose, and throwing her half-burned cigarette into the grate, seated herself in a straight-backed chair facing Markham, folding her sinewy, tapering hands on the table before her.
Markham studied her for several moments.
“You were awake last night, reading in bed, I understand, when the shot was fired in your brother’s room.”
“Zola’s Nana, to be explicit. Mother told me I shouldn’t read it; so I got it at once. It was frightfully disappointing, though.”
“And just what did you do after you heard the report?” continued Markham, striving to control his annoyance at the girl’s flippancy.
“I put my book down, got up, donned a kimono, and listened for several minutes at the door. Not hearing anything further, I peeked out. The hall was dark, and the silence felt a bit spooky. I knew I ought to go to Chet’s room and inquire, in a sisterly fashion, about the explosion; but, to tell you the truth, Mr. Markham, I was rather cowardly. So I went—oh, well, let the truth prevail: I ran up the servants’ stairs and routed out our Admirable Crichton; and together we investigated. Chet’s door was unlocked, and the fearless Sproot opened it. There sat Chet, looking as if he’d seen a ghost; and somehow I knew he was dead. Sproot went in and touched him, while I waited; and then we went down to the dining-room. Sproot did some phoning, and afterward made me some atrocious coffee. A half-hour or so later this gentleman”—she inclined her head toward Heath—“arrived, looking distressingly glum, and very sensibly refused a cup of Sproot’s coffee.”
“And you heard no sound of any kind before the shot?”
“Not a thing. Everybody had gone to bed early. The last sound I heard in this house was mother’s gentle and affectionate voice telling the nurse she was as neglectful as the rest of us, and to bring her morning tea at nine sharp, and not to slam the door the way she always did. Then peace and quiet reigned until half past eleven, when I heard the shot in Chet’s room.”
“How long was this interregnum of quietude?” asked Vance.
“Well, mother generally ends her daily criticism of the family around ten-thirty; so I’d say the quietude lasted about an hour.”
“And during that time you do not recall hearing a slight shuffling sound in the hall? Or a door closing softly?”
The girl shook her head indifferently, and took another cigarette from a small amber case she carried in her sweater-pocket.
“Sorry, but I didn’t. That doesn’t mean, though, that people couldn’t have been shuffling and shutting doors all over the place. My room’s at the rear, and the noises on the river and in 52nd Street drown out almost anything that’s going on in the front of the house.”
Vance had gone to her and held a match to her cigarette.
“I say, you don’t seem in the least worried.”
“Oh, why worry?” She made a gesture of resignation. “If anything is to happen to me, it’ll happen, whatever I do. But I don’t anticipate an immediate demise. No one has the slightest reason for killing me—unless, of course, it’s some of my former bridge partners. But they’re all harmless persons who wouldn’t be apt to take extreme measures.”
“Still”—Vance kept his tone inconsequential—“no one apparently had any reason for harming your two sisters or your brother.”
“On that point I couldn’t be altogether lucid. We Greenes don’t confide in one another. There’s a beastly spirit of distrust in this ancestral domain. We all lie to each other on general principles. And as for secrets! Each member of the family is a kind of Masonic Order in himself. Surely there’s some reason for all these shootings. I simply can’t imagine anyone indulging himself in this fashion for the mere purpose of pistol practice.”
She smoked a moment pensively, and went on:
“Yes, there must be a motive back of it all—though for the life of me I can’t suggest one. Of course Julia was a vinegary, unpleasant person, but she went out very little, and worked off her various complexes on the family. And yet, she may have been leading a double life for all I know. When these sour old maids break loose from their inhibitions I understand they do the most utterly utter things. But I just can’t bring my mind to picture Julia with a bevy of jealous Romeos.” She made a comical grimace at the thought. “Ada,
